The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

In this devastating critique of the mindset behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years, Thomas Sowell sees what has happened not as a series of isolated mistakes, but as a logical consequence of a vision whose defects have led to disasters in education, crime, family disintegration, and more.

Basic Economics, Fifth Edition: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy

In this fifth edition of Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell revises and updates his popular book on commonsense economics, bringing the world into clearer focus through a basic understanding of the fundamental economic principles and how they explain our lives. Drawing on lively examples from around the world and from centuries of history, Sowell explains basic economic principles for the general public in plain English.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding. His starting point is moral intuition - the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right.

Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment

In Adults in the Room, Yanis Varoufakis exposes the shocking reality of how power is wielded behind the scenes at the EU - and argues that only radical reform can save it from collapse. Yanis Varoufakis became globally famous when was elected finance minister of Greece with a specific mandate to say no to the EU: to reject the forced loans and crushing austerity forced upon his country by the Eurozone.

Economic Facts and Fallacies

Economic Facts and Fallacies is designed for people who want to understand economic issues without getting bogged down in economic jargon, graphs, or political rhetoric. Writing in a lively manner that does not require any prior knowledge of economics, Thomas Sowell exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues, including many that are widely disseminated in the media and by politicians.

Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World

Known for his network of conservative websites that draws millions of readers everyday, Andrew Breitbart has one main goal: to make sure the "liberally biased" major news outlets in this country cover all aspects of a story fairly. Breitbart is convinced that too many national stories are slanted by the news media in an unfair way. In Righteous Indignation, Breitbart talks about the key issues that Americans face, how he has aligned himself with the Tea Party, and how one needs to deal with the liberal news world head on.

Black Privilege: Opportunity Comes to Those Who Create It

Charlamagne Tha God - the self-proclaimed "Prince of Pissing People Off", co-host of Power 105.1's The Breakfast Club, and "hip-hop's Howard Stern" - shares his unlikely success story as well as how embracing one's truths is a fundamental key to success and happiness.

The Abolition of Liberty: The Decline of Order and Justice in England

From identification cards to how we protect our property, public debate rages over what our basic human rights are and how they are to be protected. In this trenchant and provocative audiobook, Peter Hitchens sets out to show that popular views of these hotly contested issues - from crime and punishment to so-called 'soft drugs' - are based on mistaken beliefs, massaged figures, and cheap slogans. His powerful and counterintuitive conclusions make challenging listening for those on both the Left and the Right.

Black Rednecks and White Liberals

This explosive new audiobook challenges many of the long-held assumptions about blacks, about Jews, about Germans and Nazis, about slavery, and about education. Plainly written, powerfully reasoned, and backed with a startling array of documented facts, Black Rednecks and White Liberals takes on the trendy intellectuals of our times as well as historic interpreters of American life.

Race and Culture: A World View

In his book Race and Culture, Sowell asks the question: "What is it that allows certain groups to get ahead?" and the answer will undoubtedly create debates for years to come. The thesis of Race and Culture is that productive skills are the key to understanding the economic advancement of particular racial or ethnic groups, as well as countries and civilizations - and that the spread of those skills, whether through migration or conquest, explains much of the advancement of the human race.

Capitalism and Freedom

Milton Friedman argues that the appropriate role of competitive capitalism occurs when the majority of our economic activity flows through private enterprise within a free-market environment. This is unequivocally the most effective device for achieving economic freedom, as well as the necessary condition in which political freedom can be attained. Friedman's arguments are positively bold, enlightening, and impacting. Among the specific topics he addresses are "The Control of Money", "Fiscal Policy", "Capitalism and Discrimination", and "Social Welfare Measures".

How to Be a Conservative

What does it mean to be a conservative in an age so sceptical of conservatism? How can we live in the presence of our 'canonized forefathers' at a time when their cultural, religious and political bequest is so routinely rejected? With soft left-liberalism as the dominant force in Western politics, what can conservatives now contribute to public debate that will not be dismissed as pure nostalgia?

Wealth, Poverty, and Politics: An International Perspective

In Wealth, Poverty, and Politics, Thomas Sowell, one of the foremost conservative public intellectuals in the country, argues that political and ideological struggles have led to dangerous confusion about income inequality in America. Pundits and politically motivated economists trumpet ambiguous statistics and sensational theories while ignoring the true determinant of income inequality: the production of wealth.

Conquests and Cultures: An International History

This book is the culmination of fifteen years of research and travels that have taken the author completely around the world twice. Its purpose has been to try to understand the role of cultural differences within nations and between nations, today and over the centuries of history, in shaping the economic and social fates of peoples and of whole civilizations.

Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea

Governments today in both Europe and the United States have succeeded in casting government spending as reckless wastefulness that has made the economy worse. In contrast, they have advanced a policy of draconian budget cuts - austerity - to solve the financial crisis. We are told that we have all lived beyond our means and now need to tighten our belts. This view conveniently forgets where all that debt came from. Not from an orgy of government spending, but as the direct result of bailing out, recapitalizing, and adding liquidity to the broken banking system.

All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain's Political Class

Based on unrivalled access to all the key politicians and their advisors - including Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, George Osborne, Nigel Farage and Dominic Cummings, the mastermind of Vote Leave - Shipman has written a political history that reads like a thriller and offers a gripping day-by-day account of what really happened behind the scenes in Downing Street, both Leave campaigns, the Labour Party, Ukip and Britain Stronger in Europe.

The Grapes of Wrath

Shocking and controversial when it was first published, Steinbeck's Pulitzer prize-winning epic remains his undisputed masterpiece. Set against the background of Dust Bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, it tells of the Joad family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel west in search of the promised land.

Knowledge and Decisions

This reissue of Thomas Sowell's classic study of decision making, which includes a preface by the author, updates his seminal work in the context of The Vision of the Anointed. Sowell, one of America's most celebrated public intellectuals, describes in concrete detail how knowledge is shared and disseminated throughout modern society. He warns that society suffers from an ever-widening gap between firsthand knowledge and decision making-a gap that threatens not only our economic and political efficiency but our very freedom.

The Cameron Delusion: Updated Edition of 'The Broken Compass'

The struggle between the main political parties has been reduced to an unpopularity contest, in which voters hold their noses and sigh as they trudge to the polls. Peter Hitchens explains how and why British politics has sunk to this dreary level - the takeover of the parties and the media by conventional left-wing dogmas which then call themselves 'the centre ground'. The Tory party under David Cameron has become a pale-blue twin of New Labour, offering change without alteration.

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today's developing countries-with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.

The Problem with Socialism

Remember when socialism was a dirty word? Now students at America's elite universities are parroting socialist talking points and "sure thing" Hillary Clinton is struggling to win the Democratic nomination against a 74-year-old avowed socialist who promises to make the nation more like Europe. What's happened? Do Americans need a reminder about the dangers of socialist ideology and practices?

Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue

In this short book, Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz invite you to join an urgently needed conversation: Is Islam a religion of peace or war? Is it amenable to reform? Why do so many Muslims seem drawn to extremism? What do words like Islamism, jihadism, and fundamentalism mean in today's world? Remarkable for the breadth and depth of its analysis, this dialogue between a famous atheist and a former radical is all the more startling for its decorum. Harris and Nawaz have produced something genuinely new: they engage one of the most polarizing issues of our time - fearlessly and fully - and actually make progress.

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans - predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth - and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.

Migrations and Cultures: A World View

Most commentators look at the issue of immigration from the viewpoint of immediate politics. In doing so, they focus on only a piece of the issue and lose touch with the larger picture. Now Thomas Sowell offers a sweeping historical and global look at a large number of migrations over a long period of time. Migrations and Cultures shows the persistence of cultural traits in particular racial and ethnic groups.

Publisher's Summary

This is a study of how intellectuals as a class affect modern societies by shaping the climate of opinion in which official policies develop, on issues ranging from economics to law to war and peace.

The thesis of Intellectuals and Society is that the influence of intellectuals is not only greater than in previous eras but also takes a very different form from that envisioned by those like Machiavelli and others who have wanted to directly influence rulers. It has not been by shaping the opinions or directing the actions of the holders of power that modern intellectuals have most influenced the course of events, but by shaping public opinion in ways that affect the actions of power holders in democratic societies, whether or not those power holders accept the general vision or the particular policies favored by intellectuals. Even government leaders with disdain or contempt for intellectuals have had to bend to the climate of opinion shaped by those intellectuals.

Intellectuals and Society not only examines the track record of intellectuals in the things they have advocated but also analyzes the incentives and constraints under which their views and visions have emerged. One of the most surprising aspects of this study is how often intellectuals have been proved not only wrong, but grossly and disastrously wrong in their prescriptions for the ills of society-- and how little their views have changed in response to empirical evidence of the disasters entailed by those views.

I have to confess that I find Thomas Sowell fascinating. I read his book “Economic Facts and Fallacies” and I have read many more. I enjoy watching him one “Youtube.” The man has a fantastic mind, he is able to tie real problems and solutions to real outcomes. He does not need to invent, slander or use pejoratives to attach those that disagree. His logic, history, facts and reality prove him right over and over again. I love this book. I enjoyed every bit of it, and I love how Dr. Sowell ties every bit of the intelligentsia’s rhetoric back facts, numbers, reality, and history. The book follows Dr. Sowell’s thoughts on most of the materials I have read. There is nothing new here, except the ability to read Dr. Sowell’s thought. He is unapologetic, honest and forthright. Unlike the Intellectuals who will attack him personally, he has honor, and real intelligence. This work will never rise to fame, as he pulls the blinds open on the Intelligentsia, but it is a great read, even if you don’t care for Thomas Sowell.

10 of 11 people found this review helpful

Gare&Sophia

Alexandria, VA, United States

05/12/12

Overall

Performance

Story

"An efficient attack on liberal philosophy."

This author is intelligent and mission oriented. He has taken the liberal line and found many cogent attacks on its margins and fissures. His tone is condsending, and he can be quite harsh. However, if you are a liberal I recommend this book to understand the conservative line. If you are a conservative this book will fit very well into your worldview.

He makes so good point about how the liberal model, that we can do better, is often at variance with actual experience. Yet, a good innoculation to his retoric would be the books; The working poor, and The new Jim Crow. These books counter all of the arguments that are passionately offered in this work.

However, all in all, I found this book to be informative and interesting.

18 of 21 people found this review helpful

Alexander R.

RAVENSDALE, WA, US

07/07/15

Overall

"Thought provoking"

I really enjoyed this book and it narration. Both the steam if thought and the talent of the narrator were easy to follow and stay engaged with. The content of the book as well gave me a lot to think about in terms of how I interpret history, politics, and society in general. I would encourage anyone to read this book if they have questions about how we as a society have gotten to were we are.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Susan

Mattapoisett, Morocco

17/05/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Informative"

All Thomas Sowell books are written with truth as the foundation. The narrator was fantastic and well rehearsed. Highly recommended.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Justin

Columbia, PA, USA

06/05/10

Overall

"Biased but good"

Wow! I have to admit this was a book that forced me to look up quite a few words, but it was worth it to figure out exactly what concept the author was trying to convey. This book has strong biases against "Intellectuals" as defined by the author, but he makes excellent points on how society is sometimes hindered by the elitist mentality that is becoming more prevalent in our higher education system graduates and government officials.

To sum up the author's concept as best I can: There is a select, but growing group of individuals who feel that society should be run by the smartest and most educated. That this group of select few will do a better job of running society and deciding what is best for the not-so-educated, not-so-smart masses.

He fundamentally believes that this approach is complete folly.

The author repeatedly challenges this concept and gives numerous examples (some good and some really biased) of how this method of leading society is flawed.

Well worth the read if only to challenge yourself to look at things differently.

30 of 40 people found this review helpful

Wayne

Matthews, NC

07/12/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Dr. Thomas Sowell is a national treasure"

I continue to write reviews of the very best of the many hundreds books in my Audible library that I listened to before I started routinely writing reviews. Intellectuals and Society is fits in that category.

Sowell is a PhD economist who also is black. His economics books are best read and studied in printed format, but his books, columns, and essays on history, culture, and and current events are a great fit for the audiobook format. Dr. Sowell is now in his 80's but he remains prolific. On my list of public people I most admire he ranks #1!

In this audiobook Sowell makes the case that most intellectuals are arrogant and lack common sense, and that their views have far more sway on public opinion and policy than is justified. His case is a strong one that is supported by a multitude of examples.

9 of 12 people found this review helpful

Amazon Customer

02/02/10

Overall

"Very Good, But Re-warmed Visions of the Annointed"

I am a big fam of Thomas Sowell's writings and have been since I read Visions of the Annointed a few years ago. That said, having read the former, I was disappointed that this book was really little more than a re-warmed version of VOtA. If you have read VOtA, I would not suggest thsi book. If not, It is a worthy read and sheds light on the tricks played by intellectuals and the followers to skew reality to match their vision.

22 of 31 people found this review helpful

Chris

17/11/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Incredible"

For sure one of his best works. I highly recommend for anyone seeking to understand the unaccountable dogmatism of the media and intellectuals around the world.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

mark

29/10/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"This should be required in high schools and colleges, perhaps junior high schools."

This book also explains the trouble Americans have found themselves with our political systems. Ayn Rand's book on capitalism should also be read by students.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Amazon Customer

Utah

26/08/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Should be required reading. Everyone will benefit"

this book should be read read or listen to by everyone. Dr Sowell understands the problem and offers the solutions.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

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